As utilities roll out plans for how they will cut back on greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, JEA has been meeting with representatives of businesses, nonprofits, local governments, and environmental groups to forge a plan for how it will produce electricity in the decades to come.
It’s a mix of perspectives that’s guaranteed to generate live-wire debate.
“We have never had a dull meeting,” Laura Marshall Schepis, chief external affairs officer, told the JEA board’s Finance Committee during a recent update on the plan.
Two local environmental groups, the Sierra Club of Northeast Florida and the St. Johns Riverkeeper, have used JEA’s invitation to join those discussions as a way to urge more renewable energy while pressing JEA to put a hard stop on ever building another power plant using fossil fuels whose greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere.
“We’re really talking about are we going to leave a planet that’s livable for future generations,” said Logan Cross, chairman of the Sierra Club of Northeast Florida.
